>>7
dammit, i fail..
>>1
Join the ACM. Duh!
Also, the paper is not all that interesting. Just had a glance at it there now. Maybe if I read it fully it may be..
In any case, hres the introduction for your reading pleasure:
The search for the optimal algorithm to compute a function is one of
the fundamental problems in computer science. In contrast to
theoretical studies of optimal algorithms, practical applications
motivated the design, implementation, and use of the superoptimizer.
Instead of proving upper or lower bounds for abstract algorithms, the
superoptimizcr finds the shortest program in the program space
defined by the instruction set of commercial machines, such the
Motorola 68000 or Intei 8086.
The functions to be optimized are specified with programs written
using the target machine's instruction set. Therefore, the input to the
superoptimizer is a machine language program. The output is
another program, which may be shorter. Since both programs run on
the same processor, with a well-defined environment, we can estab-
lish their equivalence.
A probabilistie test and a method for pruning the search tree makes
the superoptimizer a practical tool for programs of limited size
(about 13 machine instructions).
In section 2, we describe an interesting example to illustrate the su-
peroptimizer approach. The design azd algorithms used in the super-
optimizer are detailed in section 3. We discuss the applications and
limitations of the superoptimizer in section 4. In section 5, we corn-
pare the superoptimizer with related work. The conclusion in section
6 is followed by a list of interesting minimal programs in appendix I.